The academic year starts next week, and UCU still have an academic boycott policy on their books. To fight this policy and ensure that Israeli academics are not targetted by their colleagues for boycott, we need your support.
UCU has a legal duty to act to prevent its own structures being used to promote racism. As a Trade Union it has a moral duty to display zero tolerance towards racism of any type. Instead, it has allowed a discriminatory boycott debate to poison the atmosphere for Jews in the Union.
UCU must accept some responsibility for allowing the poison of the boycott debate to enter the bodypolitic of the Union. It is not sufficient for the UCU to simply revoke the posting rights of the perpetrator in this case without making any attempts to prevent future incidents.
We call upon UCU to ensure no other members are sent racist materials by their Union, and to take meaningful action against UCU members and officers who encourage or permit the spread of antisemitism."
UCU Activists defend antisemitic article
- UCU runs a members-only email "activists list", which currently has about 700 members.
- The activists list has been dominated by arguments over UCU's policy on the academic boycott of Israel.
- Last week, UCU member Jenna Delich promoted a link to the website of neo-Nazi David Duke to support a pro-boycott argument. The article she was promoting claimed that Israeli control of the media.
- Engage members had previously complained that Ms Delich had crossed the line into antisemitism in some of her previous emails, but their complaints had been dismissed by UCU.
- The popular blog 'Harry's Place' was reported on the story. Pro-boycott members encouraged complaints to Harry's Place's Internet company in an attempt to silence it. The site was removed from the Internet for a day before being restored.
- Although UCU has suspended Ms Delich from the activists list, it refuses to accept responsibility for any past or future incidents involving racist materials on the activists list.
- Some pro-boycott UCU members are still defending the content of the article on the David Duke site - you can see their comments here
- Commenting on the affair Jeremy Newmark, joint-head of Stop the Boycott, said:
UCU has a legal duty to act to prevent its own structures being used to promote racism. As a Trade Union it has a moral duty to display zero tolerance towards racism of any type. Instead, it has allowed a discriminatory boycott debate to poison the atmosphere for Jews in the Union.
UCU must accept some responsibility for allowing the poison of the boycott debate to enter the bodypolitic of the Union. It is not sufficient for the UCU to simply revoke the posting rights of the perpetrator in this case without making any attempts to prevent future incidents.
We call upon UCU to ensure no other members are sent racist materials by their Union, and to take meaningful action against UCU members and officers who encourage or permit the spread of antisemitism."
Key UCU committee to meet next Friday
- UCU's new International Committee is due to meet next Friday, the 5th September
- This committee has been set up to deal with international policy issues, but it is widely understood that it has been created to implement UCU's policy on boycotts of Israel.
- The committee does not appear in the UCU constitution and has not published a list of its members.
